I need to craft a webfilter based on squid with multiple wireless aps / advert and malware blocking and whitelisted sites on the free public side for a local business - so will be providing one and a backup unit

Its power connector is a little bit odd. It is 4mmx1.7mm. I think it is the same as the one used by PSP.
Or, you can get one of this or this and solder a USB cable to it. This will probably be even better.

The images are in here. You need to use the Orange Pi PC images. The ubuntu image can be used directly. To use the Debina images need to include the right kernel files in the boot partition of the micro-SD according to the instructions given here.
Edit:
I ordered and received an Orange Pi One. The shipping was really fast. It only took 7 days from ordering to receiving!
The images for Orange Pi PC also work on Orange Pi One.

Can someone suggest what would be the best price-to-performance mini board for 2-3 usb and IP webcams capture on a wired & wireless LAN, periodically received video encoding to avi or mp4, and recording to an attached sata or usb drive or thumb? The webcams would likely start send footage simultaneously based on motion when birds will arrive to the nest.

Would USB 2.0 or 3.0 port capability be preferred in this case, and why? I know that USB3.0 may interfere with WiFi performance. But also it ensure faster write speeds without taxing CPU more than USB 2.0. As to Sata, it appears on many such boards they solder USB-to-Sata converter chip, so writing to Sata disk gets slower than to USB2.0.

Of course its desirable to unload MP4 encoding tasks to GPU, but I haven't seen webcam capture packages that can do it, most rely on CPU encoding. And most mini PC GPU types aren't known to support hardware encoding anyway. Any suggestions here?

I'd think that Pogoplug series 4 would be ideal for the task, as display capabilities aren't must have, but using it would definitely require CPU encoding for video, thus delaying writing these videos to disk. Especially given the fact that encoding would likely be done in real time while videos are received from the webcams, so several tasks (receiving over lan, encoding, writing to disk) will combine load to CPU, possibly leading to dropped frames or entire footage.

What do you think guys? Or its a task for a more robust thin client? Can you suggest a suitable one, or give a link to a forum where mini pc hardware comparisons & usage are key topics?

sambul14 I can walk a few steps of the journey with you, though I'm no expert on the little boards nor thier ability to encode in realtime.

However I too have good footage of strange birds at the feeder, including audio of pencil microphones for each of a hummingbird's wings. you should hear that in stereo. The chirps still got through so I'll have to edit that someday, but pretty cool.

As for instant video encoding to say, MOV or MP4, I can only tell you about a cheap but super cool camera I have, a Canon ELPH-115. As-is it will encode 720p on the fly with zero artifacts, but lately I found an article called Add DSLR Features to Your Canon Point-and-Shoot Digicam. With this temporary firmware you can motion detect things like lightening and probably birds. There's a temporary and permananent way to set that up, and the temp way you can use an 8GB SD card so it's not limited to a 2GB (I don't know why these limitations).

As for these Pogoplugs, I can't possibly see a single-CPU Pogoplug managing the whole operation. Maybe any of the quadcore offerings here ought to work fine and write to SD card like the Canon does. You can get a LOT of video compressed for not much space. In fact there's a $50 OrangePi Plus I'd snap up in a heartbeat if I could, just send video down gigabit ethernet and control the unit from several hundred feet away if need be.

I'll get out of your hair for now, but would love to hear what others think.

Also Monday is Chinese New Years, year of the Monkey so if you order now they're probably busy eating sea monster and the dragon ate your money...

Thanks. I can see Elph-115 having USB2.0 port to hook to a board and no Mic, but what Linux program you can control it with over Lan, including watching footage through a web UI? What brand and model SD card allows to write MP4s in real time? Still using a digital camera is a bit heavy weight compare to IP cams, but they seems to have very efficient video encoding chips.

What GPU types currently used in these SBC are capable of hardware video encoding, and using what webcam software? I don't think it makes sense to consider now boards without USB3.0 support whether they have SATA converter or not. Of course target price range $20-30 is a bit challenging. I wonder if Odroid-XU4 is a good contender, though a little pricey? Latest Orange PI models with G-lan might also fit price wise despite USB2.0 and SATA II bridge on board.

As to Chinese New Year, they stopped shipping about 2 weeks ago, since most local couriers picking up mail from sellers and delivering to large consolidator hubs went back to villages for the holidays. Will get back to normal in 3-4 weeks given huge backlog. That's what I was told. This is despite CN Post and large international carriers never sleep, because direct shipping through them is costly. :)

@ sambul14 unfortunately I've stuck on a bird video tangent, thinking to take this a step forward and program a drone to shadow the bird from x-feet away at all times. This could be a great project for University students, a drone that locks on to a bird and keeps its camera pointed and focused at all times, radar to keep a distance of 5-20 feet, and keep itself safe and avoid the eventual window that claims the bird. I'd predict the most hair-raising 5 minute video ever made. But in 4K quality? Plus you could have this in a neighborhood with billboards that have a chance of showing product sponsors in the background as you're chasing a bird. Sorry that tangent.

As for the ELPH-115 there are stereo mics in there, and audio gets printed with the video. The 3rd-party development software is something I noticed last week and another person tested a bit with another Canon. But this area is a great for brainstorming. Another route may be to use a tablet or iPhone type thing. I found an iPhone 5 last spring, dropped it off to the police station, but while I had it was over-wowed at the camera's beautiful imaging. My particular ELPH-115 was a gift and every Canon above that has way better image sensors. Mine I have to rely on good lighting. You may notice birds like morning and evening light, as well as right before rain, right before storms.

Another thing I've thought is to use a sick color backdrop behind the bird feeder and chroma key it so you can insert any background a lot easier, like the TV weather caster does.

So it all depends on your needs. But there's no substitute for trying everything, at least you know first hand.

Chroma keying is not that easy in practice with simplistic software as it looks in TV Studio done in hardware. As to bird chasing with a drone, it can produce unexpected results, since the bird will try to fly away from the drone, and they are very efficient at maneuvering in the air. I guess your drone may not survive the chase. :)

Besides, birds can sharply drop speed and park on trees that would be next to impossible for the drone. At least here nature is winning.

That's the idea though, to follow it for the rest of it's 5 minute, real exciting, life. I don't have the technology to accomplish this, but I can imagine what the video would look like in great detail. Maybe a Kickstarter fund to have experts do this, and give the profits to angry environmentalist groups.

Unless we could catch a bird and mount a selfie collar on it, little camera going up and having.. a bird's eye view... that would eliminate the need to -=motivate=- a bird like the previous idea...

Of course the picture below is blurry, it was taken through two planes of glass after the squirrel pulled a knife on me.
I had to sneak peanut butter out to the electrical box and wait 'till the power went out.

*That story might not be true, but it sounded good.

This part is true, that picture is a frame of a video where the squirrel really was acting like a punk, no idea what set him off. But the background is the neighbor's place and the ledge the squirrel was standing on looked especially gross that day in the sun.So I do like the idea of chroma key and don't think it would be that hard to pull off, just a 4' x 4' sheet of plywood with some hunter's florescent green or something. And as long as microphones have windscreens and are above pointing down, there's little chance of anything bad happening. Hard to filter human noise out of there in the daytime however.

So back to square one: how to make a OrangePi unit and use for camping or hikking, for high rez capture out in the sticks.

I settled for now on this little devil Orange PI PC. With latest Linux images from their forum members covering all the bases and heading towards mainline, it looks like an ideal contender for my task. :)

thanks for the information about the dimensions of the power connector - i had a real job on finding a suitable connector and without the informatin below, i would still be looking. really glad you posted this!

twinclouds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Its power connector is a little bit odd. It is
> 4mmx1.7mm. I think it is the same as the one used
> by PSP.
> Or, you can get one of
> [url=http://www.ebay.com/itm/2PCS-1-7mm-x-4-0mm-Ma
> le-DC-Power-Plug-Tip-Jack-Connector-Laptop-/161892
> 765882?hash=item25b18f90ba:g:JZMAAOSwsFpWTWxn]this
> [/url] or
> [url=http://www.ebay.com/itm/5PCS-1-7mm-x-4-0mm-DC
> -Male-plug-socket-Charger-Power-Plug-Soldering-TQ2
> 30A5-/301674874744?hash=item463d394778:g:qZcAAOSwj
> VVVkSqZ]this[/url] and solder a USB cable to it.
> This will probably be even better.

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